Who, what, when, where and why

27.09.2016

Letizia Gambini

As our Head of Communications, Letizia spends her time keeping our community of users, supporters and developers talking to each other. Before coming to Sourcefabric, she worked in Brussels as the Communications Coordinator of the European Youth Forum and as the Director of External Relations and Funding for the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM). Her passion lies in the intersection between technology, journalism and society. She grew up in Italy, but enjoys travelling all over the globe. As an avid reader and bookworm, she is an obsessive collector of editions of Le Petit Prince in all the languages of the world. She believes that dessert should be eaten first and loves having ice-cream for breakfast. What a great way to start the day!

Growing stronger every year

Every year there is a week that everyone at Sourcefabric eagerly awaits. It’s called Sourcecamp, our annual staff meeting. Each year we gather the Sourcefabric team from 13 different countries to one location for a week of presentations, brainstorming, and activities. This year we all met in the Czech Republic, just outside of Prague.

Sourcecamp is an unconference where we discuss the present state of the organisation and plan for the future. But to me, Sourcecamp is mostly the moment we celebrate the great achievements we have made as a team, and connect with each other for just who we are. It is the perfect welcome event for new colleagues and a great get-together for the ones who’ve seen some more Sourcefabric moons.

Since last year, we’ve had many achievements: our team has grown (we’re now about 68 people, and looking for some more to join us - yes, we’re hiring!), we have grown our client/user lists, Airtime and Booktype are steadily gaining ground as standalone projects and we have a new kid on the block, a digital publishing solution for Superdesk. Most of all, it was fantastic to hear that our newsroom management system Superdesk is being used in production by our development partners AAP (Australian Associated Press).

Continuous improvement

We’re doing well, and yet, we can always do more. At Sourcecamp, we introduced a restructuring of the development and project teams around Superdesk to better serve our clients and keep delivering on our roadmap. In 2017, we want to make SaaS for Superdesk a reality, and we’re already increasing our capacity to offer 24/7 support to our clients. Booktype has ambitious plans to take over the self-publishing industry and Airtime Pro is growing its client-base every day.

As our CEO and Sourcefabric co-founder Sava put it, we have the same ambitions as when we started: produce the best possible (open source) software for quality journalism and become the world’s primary hub of development software for journalism. Fast forward to 2016, we’re in a pretty good place to provide the (tech) bedrock for journalism worldwide.

This year we introduced a new Sourcecamp Hackathon day. It brought about many new ideas and got the team excited to work on their projects. Despite the tired faces (probably to be blamed on the late night karaoke session?!), watching developers, project managers, admin and marketing colleagues work shoulder to shoulder and in a few hours get the work done, was truly inspiring. No wonder Sourcefabric’s motto is “Find a way or make one”. In times like this, there is no better attitude to tackle the news industry: we have to play our role in securing a future for independent, quality journalism.

Work hard, play harder

The great thing about Sourcecamp is that everyone is aware of the special value of the time we spend together in one place. And because it’s so rare, we all make the best of it. So: any time is a good time for brainstorming. When the daily sessions come to an end, it’s time to hit the bowling lanes, the ping pong table or the pool. With the same motivation, we can brainstorm the latest coding idea or marketing strategy at breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a bit later at the bar.

When I got back to Berlin, I couldn’t help but think that Sourcefabric is full of uniquely talented individuals and that it is also thanks to the great spirit this team has that we can thrive and achieve great things. So, bring it on with another year of challenges. We’re ready to bring the Sourcefabric revolution to the world of journalism.

Want to join our fantastic team? View our jobs page to see if there is an opening right for you. We’d love to have you!